I use the moblinkd bluetooth to android set up and really like the fact that it uses my tablet as an interface as it's great with maps and messaging.

It's flexible but does result in a lot of dependencies in the truck to make sure it's all working; all the settings and cables have to be right. The tablet, device, and radio all have to be charged or powered and all 3 have to be set right.

I've used it to send messages and to find others at camp when arriving in the dark, I've also had family members keep an eye on my location when remote... pretty cool stuff.

That's the way I'm thinking I'm going to go now. I've swayed the other way since last week. Now my plan is a TM-V71A radio - it'll do cross-band and has dual receive and a data port to hook a Mobilinkd to. And I have an old tablet that will be perfect for this use.

I got a cable to link my phone to my Beofeng but haven't had much luck with it. My little radio seems to do a lot better on 70cm vs 2m. I was doing a bunch of troubleshooting to figure out why I wasn't receiving into aprsdroid only to realize the radio isn't receiving anything at all on 144.39 most of the time. Not sure what's up with that I expected to see more activity in and around Denver.

I do, but set much lower. I think I will set it higher - that gives good feedback on phone volume other than hooking up a pair of headphones. The volume setting for aprsdroid is indirect. Regardless, the volume is nice and high and keying the radio no problem but no joy.

I've got the squelch turned all the way down to 1 and just listening and watching the radio I rarely receive anything at all on 144.39. I did get in a single packet from a digipeater yesterday but that's it.

I think my little radio is crapping out on 2m. I've been noticing I've been having more and more trouble lately and where 70cm and 2m used to seam pretty even, now 70cm is much better. I'm sitting here with the radio in a window on the 27th floor of a downtown office tower and have quite the range on 70cm. I can hear and connect to the repeaters on Squaw Mt no problem on 70cm but not at all on 2m. Man, it's gonna take AT LEAST $25 to replace this HT!

Yeah, that's what's really got me scratching my head. I feel like my 2m performance is poor right now on my radio, but it's not THAT bad. I can hear (but not participate in) various nets on the 145.310 repeater and while I have had trouble listening in to the CO4x4RR net on the 145.340 from my house lately I received it quite well on top of Lookout Mountain last Saturday.

If I listen in on 144.390 I should be able to hear a bunch of digital slop, right? From my office I've got line of site to a huge swath of metro Denver and from my house on Green Mountain I have line of site nearly to Kansas and Wyoming (though the mountain shields me from most of the mountain-top repeaters). Occasionally I get a blip of static but not long enough to be a packet I don't think - it never sounds as long as the packets that aprsdroid is trying to send out. But other than that 144.390 is silent even with the squelch set as low as it will go (of course I get terrible noise if I turn off squelch altogether).

Not quite a baofeng, but on the Wouxon, the trick was to turn off the battery saver feature. The radio is "sleeping" and misses the first part of the packet when it wakes up so the TNC never has the entire packet to decode.

While the screen on the Nuvi makes it easy to find other stations on a map and select them as "destinations" for navigation even if they are moving, it adds 2 cables over the TM-D710G's built in GPS receiver. One is an external power cable to the Nuvi, required in "fleet mode." and the GTRANS cable has a big 1x1x.5" chunk of a converter box on it which makes it not so svelte.